Points of Articulation

yo go re

An interesting thing happened yesterday.

Hasbro is doing GI Joe Classified reveals every Wednesday this month. "Yo Joe June," they're calling it (despite the fact "GI June" was right there for the taking). They do a livestream in the morning, and immediately after, some of the things go up for preorder. It's not a bad idea, but Week 1 already managed to hit an unexpected snag.

One of the items this week is a figure fans have been greatly anticipating: Cobra Commander. Okay, yes, there have been plenty of Cobra Commanders already, but this one is different. This one is wearing his hood!

Unfortunately, rather than just being sold by himself, he's only available in a box set with a large cobra-themed throne. Honestly, it feels like Hasbro knew they had a hot commodity on their hands, and so added in an extra so they'd have an excuse to boost the price. And boost it they did! At 11am, the preorder went live on Hasbro Pulse, setting the bar at $70; which was high, but still lower than some fans had predicted when the images were leaked the day before. So it seemed... not "right," but at least "fine."

Obviously Hasbro was correct about the demand, because Pulse preorders sold out in minutes. BigBadToyStore put up a page almost immediately, following Pulse's lead and pricing, though they didn't burn through their allotment quite as fast.

The thing is, BBTS putting a page up feels like when a media outlet breaks embargo on a movie or game review: the plan was to put Pulse's preorders up at 11, and eveyone else's were to happen at 1pm. And so they did. One o'clock rolls around, and listings begin appearing on other retailers' sites. And that's where things get interesting.

Entertainment Earth had the set listed not at $69.99, but at $51.99. Well that's an odd mistake, isn't it? None of the other Joe product going up at the same time was that same price, so it wasn't even a copy-and-paste error. Oh well, no big deal, just some random quirk! Except...

GameStop, who tends to charge a little more than retail so they can offer their paid loyalty members a 5% "discount" (ie, charging them normal retail price) had it listed at $54.99. One mistake is just a mistake; two mistakes is a pattern.

And a pattern it is. It's not like one store accidentally put it up at $50 and another put it up at $65; both stores put it up at functionally the same incorrect price, which suggests that they both got that price from somewhere. Entertainment Earth got that price and posted it. GameStop got that price, added their usual overhead, and posted it. But they both got the same price.

And thanks to our reader stickboy, we know that BBTS's early listing was set at $54.99 as well.

Every so often you'll hear some wild story about a gas station in some town nowhere near you that accidentally set their pumps to sell gas for, like, 47¢ per gallon or something, and so people rush over to take advantage. That's a mistake, an understandable error. But imagine if two unrelated gas stations both did that at the same moment, one selling for 47¢ and the other for 49¢. You'd think something was up, right?

So we're left with a few possibilities, of increasing conspiracy theory levels:

1. "Man on the street" Level: It really is just a huge coincidence. Ent Earth and GameStop (and, as we learned, BBTS) just each happened to list the same wrong price at first. What a silly little whoopsie!
2. "Person who knows a little bit about how retail works" Level: Entertainment Earth and GameStop accidentally put the listing up with their cost, the wholesale cost, instead of the retail cost. As in, Hasbro makes the toy for $40, charges the store $55, the store sells it for $70, and scalpers try to sell it for $130. So the EE/GS price wasn't "wrong," per se, it was just pulled from the wrong column in the spreadsheet.
3. "Tin foil hat" Level: Hasbro was actually planning to charge $52 for the set, but jacked the price up at the last minute after seeing fan reactions to the leak. They failed to notify their retailers in time to get the price adjusted on all the product listing pages.

It's definitely not #1. And I really hope it's not #3. If anyone who works at one of Hasbro's "Fan Channel" retail partners would like to give us some inside info on how this might have happened, where the $52 price might have come from, we do promise to protect your anonymity.

Hasbro tries to sell GI Joe Classified, right now, for $30. Or, let's be precise: $27.99 plus tax. That means they want you to believe that a big plastic chair is worth $42, which is an absolute crock. Is it worth the $24 that would turn a $27.99 action figure into a $51.99 preorder? Well, that's certainly closer to being right, if nothing else.

I ordered the figure from Entertainment Earth - that's a screenshot of my own personal Orders page up there, clearly showing $51.99. Yes, EE has a reputation for not honoring their own listed prices when they feel like it, but we'll see what happens. Either way, the eventual review will let you know how much trust you should put in them as a retailer. And it'll let you know how much value that big plastic chair really adds.